st a bit of the weapon should be left
to cry out from the ashes and tell. When she was back in bed again, the
child on her arm, Tenney, disturbed by her coming, woke and turned. He
lifted his head from the pillow, to listen, and she wondered if he could
hear the beating of her heart.

"You there?" he asked. "What's that stove started out roarin' for? The
chimbly ain't afire?"

"No," said Tira. "Mebbe somethin's ketched." She got out of bed, ran
into the sitting-room, noiselessly shut the crack of draught, and came
back. "Them knots are kinder gummy," she said calmly, and was heartened
by the evenness of her voice. "I guess 'twon't roar long."

They listened together until the sound diminished, and Tira knew when he
relaxed and dropped off again. It did not seem to her that she dropped
off at all, she was so relieved to think of her enemy smouldering and
done for.

This was the night Raven had had his premonition of her and gone up to
the hut to find her, and the next night he was aware of her again, as if
she had put a hand out through the darkness and given him an imploring
touch. He and Dick had had an almost jovial day. Their wrestling bout
had proved sound medicine. It had, Raven thought, cleared the air of the
fool things they had been thinking about each other. This evening they
had talked, straight talk, as between men, chiefly of Dick's future and
his fitness for literature. There was no hint of Nan, though each
believed she was the pivot on which Dick's fortunes turned. About ten
they went up to bed, and again Raven found himself too uneasy to sleep,
and again he sat down by the window in the dark. Incredibly, yet as he
found he knew it would happen, he saw a figure running up the path. It
came almost to the front door, halted a moment, as if in doubt, stooped
and threw up a clutch of snow against a window. The snow was full of icy
pellets; they rattled against the pane. But it was not his window, which
was dark; the hand had cast its signaling pellets to the room where a
light was burning and where the outline of a man's figure had just been
visible. And the man was Dick. But Raven knew. He opened his door and
shut it as softly, stole down the stairs, opened the outer door, and
drew her in. Then, in the instant of snapping on the light, he saw Tira
recoil; for there, at the foot of the stairs, was Dick. She would have
slipped out again, but Raven's hand was on her. He still held hers, as
he had taken it, a